*How to read Chinese character: More characters related to characters 日 and 月
We have come across the compound character 明 by combining 日 and 月 in the previous chapters. We can produce more compound characters in this way. For example, two 日 becomes 昌 , three 日 becomes 晶 ,two 月 becomes 朋. Is it funny?
日 means the sun and the extended meaning of the sun can be about light, time, heat, etc. Therefore, we can use 日 as a root to produce many other compound characters, for example, 早“zou2” (morning), 晚“maan5” (night), 時 “si4” (time/hour), 昨 “zok3” (yesterday). All these characters are related to the meaning of time.
We produce many new compound characters by putting the character 日 and 月 as the root or radical.For example, 星 is the compound character of 日 and 生 while 期 is the compound character of 其 and 月 . The radical 日 of 星 shows that the nature of the character is related to “star” just like the sun; and the 生 of 星 shows the similar sound of the character since 生 “sang1” is similar to 星“sing1”. The 月 of 期 shows the nature of “time” while the 其 shows the similar sound. The sound of 期 “kei4” and 其“kei4” are the same.
The character 星 originally means “star”, but when we put the 星 with 期 together, they become a new compound word with two characters, 星期 (week). In this situation, the meaning of 星 has changed from“star” to “time”.
But there are exceptions sometimes. Though the compound character 朋 is made up of two 月 , we cannot find any relation with the character of 月. Do you know the meaning of 朋? It means friend!
